(with a different background picture than the one used in this english version...)
The photograph of the woman on the boat going to, or coming from Liberty Island was snapped by Jacques’ camera, maybe his iPhone, on the spur of the moment. He was packed in with the crowd, wind whipping through hair and across faces, by the look of it. The boat seems to fly, just like time, as I look at this photo with the Statue of Liberty standing there, nearly one hundred and forty years in place.
The hundredth of a second - the time needed to take the shot, stands still. The woman’s face catches my attention now, five years later - some kind of double-take; I imagine her today, still dazzled by the sight, just like the person hidden behind her who’s trying to take a picture too but without framing anyone in the foreground, the view straight out.
This very same sense of wonder emerges intact from my childhood when a few decades ago I took a similar boat on a school trip to see the Statue of Liberty; I was then living just north of New York. Jacques knew about this before his trip. He took another photo for me, at Grand Central, the station in the heart of Manhattan where trains leave for the town north of New York where I went to school, Poughkeepsie.
Next train 1:43 pm, then 2:43 pm; then every half hour during rush hour, 3:18…
Poughkeepsie. A puzzle to pronounce for a French speaker – Pou-ki-psie. A town whose city center we would avoid because purportedly dangerous, and whose suburbs were thriving thanks to IBM. Recession came after the computer company moved out elsewhere. The region has become a hub for opioids, among them Tramadol, a fiercely popular drug at the time the two photos are taken because of its cheap price. Police operations to stop the drug trade have been going strong. In 2023, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced the arrest of twenty-eight members of the YG Gang (Young Gunnaz Gang). He declared that in Poughkeepsie, they “not only used dangerous weapons to assault members of rival gangs, drug dealers, and others for the purpose of maintaining their position in the gang, but also distributed narcotics and other drugs and conspired to commit fraud. My Office will work tirelessly to protect New Yorkers from assault, racketeering, and other dangerous crimes associated with gang activity.”
The devastation wrought by opioids, in Poughkeepsie as elsewhere in the US, has been documented by reporters whose photographs, rewarded by the World Press Photo Foundation, have been showcased in one of their latest exhibitions. Today, the people on those photographs are irredeemably unable to step onto a boat and ride out to Liberty Island.
The devastation wrought by opioids, in Poughkeepsie as elsewhere in the US, has been documented by reporters whose photographs, rewarded by the World Press Photo Foundation, have been showcased in one of their latest exhibitions. Today, the people on those photographs are irredeemably unable to step onto a boat and ride out to Liberty Island.
Jacques’ photograph, with the Statue of Liberty in the background as its focal point, tells about time in all its guises. Disasters are out of frame, yet they creep into my story - as do happy times, like today as I write in the wake of a photograph offered to infinite contemplation.
